thoughts

I just experienced another delightfully unexpected moment in parenting. I was getting ready for bed tonight–turning off the lights, letting Soho out to potty, and re-tucking in the girls–just as I always do. But as I went in to cover Cielee, I could see that she was having a sad and scary dream. She kicked a few times and then froze with a frightened, helpless frown–a silent crying face.

I was moved. I was saddened to see my little girl so upset. I reached out and rubbed her shoulder, whispering, “It’s alright. Daddy’s here. Daddy loves you. You’re safe.” My scared little girl reached up for me with her eyes closed, and I embraced her with everything fatherly within me, praying to Jesus aloud, “Please keep Cielee safe and give her good dreams.”

Her grip loosened and her heartbeat calmed. It was at this moment when I felt like a daddy. Like her Daddy. Like her hero who came in her darkest hour. Truly, I was just grateful that I was there at a time when she needed me.

Of course, it was all contrived, I’m sure. It wasn’t even “real”. Perhaps I was saving her from an imaginary giant, rabid, 3-headed giraffe! And who knows? Maybe she won’t even remember that I was her hero on this night. Maybe she won’t wake and recall that I was there… holding her safely, soothing her to sleep.

Thank you, Father, for holding me, watching over me, and protecting me from evil in my darkest hours. Thank you for giving me hope when there was no hope. I know that there have been times in my life when I was oblivious to the work you were doing in my life. You have rescued me from myself, from others who intended harm, and from the grave. You are my hero. You are the one who watches over me.

And here’s Cielee’s.

This is the photo that she’ll look back on and use as ammunition against her parents’ argument that they have the best taste in fashion, and that they are qualified to purchase her clothing items and accessories.

Cielee had her thumb surgery on Tuesday. It went well… up until Cielee regained consciousness, only to find that she had 0% functionality in her right and left hands! I don’t think that being doped up on morphine helped her perception any, either!

She looks like quite the prize-fighting ninja. Cielee’s doing well now, despite her temporary disability. She can’t suck her favorite finger anymore, and it took a few days for her to get used to that!

I can empathize with her. She became handicapped overnight. The tasks she used to do daily–like peeing by herself, eating, brushing her hair out of her face, and building with Lincoln Logs–she can no longer do. That’s a huge blow to anyone’s independence. She’s taking it in stride, and we’re fighting back the tears and the urge to say “Awwww…” everytime she struggles to do something.

The bandages come off in about 5 days. I believe she will jump for joy on that day. I believe that we will as well.

“Mommyyyyyyyyy… I have a surprise for youuuuuuuuuuu.”

Cielee grabbed Carrie by the hand and led her into the living room. “Okay, now open your eyes.”

Carrie opens her eyes to find herself in the living room, staring at the coffee table. The table has stacks of folded rags and towels upon it, courtesy of Cielee Hollon’s laundry service. What a blessing!

A little background first. Cielee does know how to crudely fold laundry. And Cielee knows what a surprise is. But for the first time, Cielee combined the two for a “laundry surprise”. For some of you reading, the surprise is the mere fact that someone else folded the laundry. For others of you, you’re surprised that my 4-year-old folds more laundry than your 40-year-old! But for us, the surprise is that Cielee had the forethought to realize that if she folded the laundry without being asked, she would be blessing to her mommy! How awesome is that?

Thank you, God, for our little girl and for molding her into a beautiful creation before our very eyes.

In an ongoing effort to provide our children with necessary life skills, we enrolled Cielee in swimming lessons at a private lake. She’s loving the lessons, and she’s learning how to be fearless in the water. After all, it’s fearlessness we need when we’re trying to get a child to do something of which they are otherwise afraid. Under her coach’s watchful eye (and within her careful grasp), she blows bubbles, swims like a mermaid, darts like a rocket, and kicks away for what must seem like miles!

We have a local campground where we can go swimming for a nominal fee, so we decided to take Cielee and Lily to the pool to reinforce what Cielee has been learning. We strip down, cream up, grab the pool toys, and head to the edge of the pool. Without hesitation, Cielee leans over to dive right in! Whoa, kiddo! You are 3.1 feet tall, and the water is 3 feet deep, and your mouth is not on the top of your head. You can’t swim yet… and, HECK… you’re not even buoyant! “Cielee, wait for Daddy to get in first.”

I step into the pool–which happens to be about the temperature of sweat–then call for Cielee. She squats, then jumps right (on)to me. Fearlessly. I catch her and help her back to the edge. She climbs out, and we repeat this about 70 times. Somewhere in the midst of her aquabatics, I try to inject my sage advice, “Cielee, you can only jump in when there is an adult to catch you.” But for some reason, I just don’t think she gets it.  I don’t think she understands that someday, an adult won’t be there to catch her. She only understands that there has always been an adult there to catch her. Always. She’s never drowned. She’s never come close.

This is where parenting meets childhood development… and compromise must take place. In order to learn to swim, Cielee needs to be fearless in the water. She needs to put aside her healthy fear of drowning. But in order not to drown, she must learn to swim. But for a few weeks, her fearlessness and her inability to swim must coexist in a sick irony, of sorts. For the next several weeks, we’ll have to protect our child from herself. Well, I guess we do that for the rest of her childhood, and beyond, huh? You know… protect our child from herself.

I’ve heard it said that parents must provide an environment in which a child is safe to make–and learn from–small mistakes. There’s actually an educational philosophy built upon this concept, called the Montessori philosophy. It’s the idea that children can learn on their own because education is self-corrective. I don’t quite buy into that philosophy. I don’t want my daughter to teach herself to swim by first failing at it. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as drowning just a little bit.

So I am learning that parenting is huge. It’s complicated. Even before Cielee was born, I spent so much time pondering how I would shield her from the dangers of this world. It turns out that much of parenting is about protecting my child from herself; from fearless endangerment.

I watched Lily eat a popsicle today after dinner. Scratch that. I watched Lily ecstatically destroy a popsicle today with her mouth. My 1-year old sucked in the experience almost as rapidly as she inhaled her frozen blue raspberry delight. The smile never left her face, save the few moments wherein she was forced to open her mouth wide enough to “try on” the popsicle, as if she were verifying, “Yes, it fits!”. Uncontrolled laughter. Unscripted dancing. Unprovoked outbursts. Unbridaled happiness.

For about 3 minutes, Lily enjoyed the closest thing to Heaven that she has ever known.

I watched Cielee eat a popsicle today after dinner as well. She’s almost 4, so she’s much more refined when eating her popsicles. Now, she still gets the popsicle moustache, and matching color-streaks on her clothing when she eats one, but popsicles don’t elicit siezures of bliss in my 4-year old. Sure, there was the occasional teetering of her smiling head from side-to-side after some of the bites, and the spontaneous, “Mmmmmm”s here and there… but they were tempered.

I remember my psychology teacher in college boiling every human’s life experiences down to one simple premise: As humans, we face conflict, adapt, and move on to the next conflict. Adaptation refers to one’s ability to face a stressor–a challenging life event–and then figure out how to live with, or overcome that stressor. If we don’t adapt, we surely will die. And subsequent exposures to the same stressor result in diminishing stress levels over time. For instance, dating experiences with the same person, getting a flat tire, being called a name–they were all once huge stressors in my life. However, I’ve gotten used to those things, and now, they’re not so bad. I even enjoy one of those things at times.

That sounds dismal, but it rings true. I don’t think it’s the meaning of life, but it has merit.

Now, in certain psychological schools of thought, the same can be said for happiness. The idea is that when you’re faced with the same stimulus that makes you happy, the more frequently you’re exposed to it, the less it affects you.

“Adaptation to positive events is one of the biggest obstacles to happiness. If people adapt to anything positive that they do and everything positive that happens to them, how can they ever become happier?” — Amy Novotney, writer for Monitor on Psychology  

So that explains a lot. That explains why Lily goes nuts over a popsicle, and Cielee is much tempered. She’s used to it, essentially.

That makes me wonder. What recurring life events have I become numb to? What moments of happiness have I lost out on simply because those opportunities come all too frequently? The spontaneous hugs. The unsolicited “I love you”s. The ballroom dances on the kitchen floor. God, don’t let these feelings fade. Please soften this heart that has been hardened to the daily blessings of this life. And God, would you keep me from the temptation of pursuing frequent (and often meaningless) happiness out of purely selfish ambitions?

I was interrupted at work today by the serene ringtone that lets me know that my wife is calling. I answered. Whilst we were talking, my wife informed me that Cielee had a bad day at school, and that–as part of her punishment–Cielee would tell me about it when I got home.

I get home, and Carrie proceeds to tell me that Cielee got mad at breakfast and threw a bowl of grits across the lunchroom! And… towards the end of the day, in an act of defiance, Cielee stuck her tongue out at her teacher. Geesh.

So we had a little heart-to-heart father/daughter time on the balance beam in the backyard (did I mention that Cielee’s in phase two of ninja training?). I reiterated a lesson that we’ve been working on–that God wants us to love everyone… and to not be ugly to people. So she admitted that sticking her tongue out was a mean thing to do… and that she loves Miss Lori, and is sorry. She also acknowledged that throwing food is mean, too, because it makes a big mess that other people have to clean.

As a deterrent to these behaviors, I explained that she would get 3 spankings. I stressed to her that we never want her to do these things again because they are very mean things to do.

“Stand up and come here…” I said.

Then… the tears started. And the lip began to quiver. The low hum resonated from the sliver of her open mouth. Simultaneously, the saliva glands picked up production, and the komodo dragon slime began to ooze. And at this point, the first blow had not yet been delivered.

“Now, bend over Daddy’s knee.”

“Ohhhh… ho ho ho ho ho hoooooooooooooo………………..” <sniff, sniff>

Swat.

“eeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh… oh ho ho ho ho…………….”

Swat, Swat.

“Now, please sit down next to Daddy.”

At this point, Cielee is crying pretty remorsefully… next to me. I let her calm down for a few seconds, then lovingly put my arm around her as I give into empathy. Tears stream down my face as we go through the process of reconciliation.

Administering punishment to my child is–to put it mildly–tough. I never delight that I’m the one who is physically making my daughter uncomfortable… or inflicting temporary pain upon her. Never. It’s not a sick thing. It’s a logical system that was established thousands of years before I was ever born. Actions and consequences. I didn’t invent that concept.

If I truly love my daughters, is it not my responsibility to provide moral training for them so that as they grow, they exhibit characteristics that are rooted in love for God and for every individual, great or small? Getting there is a process. Getting there takes time, effort, consistency, moral resolve, tears, and lots of love.

I’m pondering the tears that I cried. They weren’t because of shame. Nor guilt. Nor pain. Nor regret. I truly believe that they were rooted in empathy for my daughter–for the struggle inside of her heart at that moment.

I believe that the process of wronging someone else, seeking forgiveness, facing the consequences of your actions, and resolving to try not to commit the same offense is not ever easy to face. This struggle inside of Cielee at that moment–well, it became apparent to my heart. It was a beautiful thing to see my daughter going through the healthy pain associated with this process. I am not ashamed… and will never be ashamed of standing by my daughters and helping shape their morals and ethics.

Now… at first, I have to admit, it felt awkward that I had just spanked my child, but somehow I was the one crying in the end! But God, thank you for allowing those tears to make me question the emotions behind those tears. I have found that You are the source at the center of my query. Thank you for firmly grounding me in a faith that cherishes children and raising them on a path of righteousness.

Lily turned 13 (months) old a couple days back. She’s like a new person. She’s almost running places now! It’s beautiful to hear the pitter-patter of her naked feet scurrying across the kitchen floor… but that usually indicates that she is homing in on Soho’s water bowl. That, in turn, typically preceeds the ceremonial bathing of one of Lily’s random toys!

She’s also trying out new sounds (orally), and said the most articulated, unintelligble thing to me this morning: “I’m the gur…”, which I am interpretting as “I’m the girl.” So officially, that is her first sentence!

So far, though, the teenage months don’t seem all that bad!

Cielee cried out in her sleep last night–quite histerically. I came into her room to hold her… and that’s when I asked her if she had a bad dream. She said, “Yeah…”. So I proceeded with “What was your dream about?…”, not knowing what her response would be.

“I was in the drain.”

“Where?”

“In the bafftub.”

“Did you dream that you fell in?”

“Yeah… but I was holding on to the fountain.” (the faucet)

“Did daddy come to save you?”

“No.”

“Well, did you cry out for daddy to come save you in your dream?”

“No.”

“Next time you have a bad dream, call out for Daddy to help you in your dream, and I’ll be there.”

“Okay.”

Aside from the humorous mental picture of my daughter half-way stuck in the bathtub drain, her retelling of the dream made me wonder what else she may fear. As far as I remember, she has had scary dreams about dinosaurs, falling in the drain, being in a cave, and being in a fire. The funny thing about the cave dream, though… is that she wasn’t upset about being in the cave. After calming her down, we came to find out that she was crying because she dreamt that she had tee-teed in her pants while she was in the cave.

“How come you tee-teed in your pants?”

“Because there was no potty in the cave.” (Duh.)

I guess that when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!

Previously, Lily was featured on YouTube, doing her army crawl/floor swim. She used this method of getting around until this week. Not wanting to get her knees dirty, she has merged walking and crawling. She gets around on her hands and feet, much like a little giraffe, and with about as much grace! But it gets her where she’s going, and fast.

Along with this physical feat, Lily has also acquired the ability to squat and then stand on her own. She’s got a wide stance; very kung-fu-esque. She’s gonna be a sumo queen!